The Last Lecture of Randy Pauche was very interesting to me. Randy Pauche was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and also a very brilliant mind. He was also very compassionate towards his family and anyone willing to learn. Even after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and only given a few months to live he was still upbeat and cared about his job enough to give us his last lecture.
In this lecture Mr. Pauche shared many of his life experiences, and things that he did not get to do. He spoke about how one of his life goals was to become a NFL football player. Even though he was not physically built to play football at such a high level, he said he learned more from trying to play than actually playing. One of his great quotes that he said from this is “experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”
It is also amazing to me at how upbeat he was during the whole lecture. I honestly thought it would be almost painful to watch his last lecture, but in reality it was quite the opposite. When he first started the lecture he said he didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him and cracked a few jokes to ease the tension. He even did a few push ups on stage to show that he had not given up on himself at all.
Towards the end of the lecture he really showed what kind of man he was. He wound the whole 76 minute lecture down to say that the whole thing was meant for his kids. He wanted them to learn from his experiences, both bad and good. Throughout the whole lecture he gave credit to others that he met throughout his life. He never really took credit for anything. This is just the kind of man that Randy Pauche was.
